Organic mushroom extract supplier Nammex has renewed its call for rulemaking around use of the term “mushroom,” in response to the launch of the Functional Mushroom Council at SupplySide Global. It claims that the nonprofit, founded by several competing suppliers, is running a “misleading marketing campaign” by using the term “mushroom” in reference to mycelium, when it should be reserved for the fruiting body portion of a fungus.

While there’s consensus that companies should be clear about which parts of a fungus are used in a finished product, industry stakeholders have spent years debating whether “mushroom” should apply to mycelium products. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been hesitant to weigh in on the matter in response to a Citizen Petition by Nammex, though a policy on food products states that a food which only contains “mushroom mycelium” shouldn’t have labeling suggesting that it contains “real mushrooms.”

“As happens more often than it should, those of us who have long been advocates for transparency in fungi product labeling and marketing are compelled to clarify the issue,” said Skye Chilton, CEO of Nammex. “It’s really very simple. The main point we have been making for decades is that functional fungi products should be accurately and properly identified in their entirety. To protect the integrity of this growing product category, consumers deserve the truth. Products that don’t contain mushrooms shouldn’t be hidden behind the term ‘mushroom.'”

A survey of 10,000 people by Nammex found that an overwhelming majority (90.1%) of people recognized a photo featuring the fruiting body portions of a fungi as “mushrooms.” Meanwhile, in response to a photo of mycelium growing on a grain substrate in a plastic bag, 20.7% identified the photo as a “mushroom,” while 79.3% checked the “not a mushroom” box.

The Functional Mushroom Council, “with ‘mushroom’ in its name and made up primarily of mycelium-fermented grain producers, doesn’t even have the word ‘mycelium’ on its website,” said Chilton. “It does, however, have the word ‘mushroom’ in its name and over 100 times on its website, which also features plenty of pictures of mushrooms. The implication is they represent products made from mushrooms, which they primarily do not.”

Ingredients made of mycelium grown on grain are mostly composed of the substrate, Nammex reports, and the company demonstrated this in a recent peer-reviewed paper highlighting analytical techniques to identify wild-sourced chaga from mycelium-on-grain products. The grain substrate “is not ‘transformed’ into something else as often claimed,” Nammex stated. “AOAC method 996.11 for starch testing confirms and quantifies this grain presence, as mushrooms and mycelium themselves contain no starch. It’s an inexpensive test that most third party labs can perform. The chemical profile is closer to the grain than the mushroom or mycelium. And yet the grain component goes unacknowledged in most mycelium-fermented grain product labeling and marketing.”

Nammex also objects to describing products containing both the fruiting body and mycelium as “full spectrum.”

“A full-spectrum preparation is a formulation intentionally designed to preserve the broad, representative chemical complexity of a specific, therapeutically relevant plant or fungal part, prioritizing the synergistic interactions of natural constituents over the isolation of single compounds. Achieving this requires extraction processes that retain the proportional profile of the original material, ensuring that the major and characteristic compound classes remain intact even if standardized to specific markers. Products where the mass or chemical profile is primarily composed of non-medicinal substrates, such as grain in mycelium fermented grain products, cannot be classified as full spectrum,” Nammex stated.

Functional Mushroom Council: Modern Analytical Techniques, Increased Research Support Mycelial Products

In response to Nammex’s statement, the Functional Mushroom Council noted that clinical studies on mycelium supplementation have ramped up over the past decade, in conjunction with advances in growing technology and analytical chemistry.

The organization also noted that more advanced analytical techniques are needed to distinguish between residual starch and the polysaccharides and beta-glucans naturally present in fungal material. Iodine-based tests, for instance, are non-specific and not designed to assess complex fungal materials or fermented systems, they noted.

In an iodine-based starch test, the polysaccharides and beta-glucans that naturally occur in fungi can create a reaction with iodine reagents, preventing the ability to distinguish between residual grain starch or fungal-based polysaccharides, the organization noted, sharing a video demonstrating that Lion’s Mane mushroom extract, whole fresh and dried mushroom, and mycelium each react to an iodine solution.

“This is a clear example of why the iodine test is misleading when assessing the bioefficacy of functional mushroom supplements,” said Paul Stamets, mushroom researcher and founder of the mushroom supplement brand Fungi Perfecti, a member company of the Functional Mushroom Council.

Modern analytical approaches, such as metabolomics and chemical fingerprinting, are fit for the purpose of directly characterizing the chemistry of finished mushroom ingredients and to validate the presence, diversity, and consistency of specific bioactives, the organization stated. Iodine-based test results can be used to mischaracterize a mycelium ingredient due to the reactivity of beta-glucans and polysaccharides; the organization maintains that iodine alone can’t be used to determine how much of a substrate has been enzymatically digested by fungal tissue.

Between mushrooms and mycelium, researchers have identified 5,000 bioactives present in a fungus through metabolomic analysis, the Functional Mushroom Council said. “Rather than arguing over outdated tests, legacy assumptions, or the naming of mushroom parts, the Council believes the industry must stay focused on rigorous science, transparent manufacturing, and what ultimately matters most – the demonstrated impact of functional mushrooms on human health.”